pause the tragic ending
by Zayz
Summary: T/Z. Ziva never wanted to be found, but Tony finds her anyway.


A/N: So…I wrote a thing. I know, I know, I'm surprised too. But here we all are.

Since Cote announced she was leaving in July, my muse has wrestled with itself over the Tiva question incessantly. There was a lot to process – especially once Ziva's farewell aired officially – and I've had a busy time with school on top of that. So it's been tough, getting around to writing a fic that felt right and really said what I needed to say.

In the end, I came up with this.

I used elements of canon here, which you'll see, but obviously it's my own spin on things. This was the story I needed to tell myself, with things the way they are. This is like my goodbye to Ziva, and by extension to Cote. I share it in the hopes that it might soothe your anger and fuel your denial, as it has mine.

A million thanks to my wonderful, brilliant, absolutely perfect beta Mina (Wilhelmina Willoughby; suchastart on Tumblr) for so graciously taking this monster on. You are the bestest, every time.

So – I hope you guys enjoy this. Please remember to review when you're done.

(Also, if you want a soundtrack as you read, listen to the instrumental track, "The Light," by the Album Leaf. I had it on repeat as I wrote. And if any of you are Scandal fans – yes, it's the Olitz song. It's my favorite.)

* * *

pause the tragic ending  
By: Zayz

Draw me under, cut me open  
Take my heart, I give it to you  
Call the thunder and bring the storm  
Hold me close, I beg of you

And pause the tragic ending  
For just a moment more  
Draw the dresser out  
And slide it to the door

And burn the air out of the room  
Close the curtain and kill the lights  
Only seconds left to tell you  
How I need you every night

And pause the tragic ending  
For I'm almost out of breath  
Whisper in my ear  
Take a bite out of my neck

- Rachael Yamagata, "Pause the Tragic Ending"

* * *

She quits because that's what they all decided to do, because it's what the case required them to do. She understands that it's meant to be temporary, and that they will find their way back on to the team soon somehow, yet the act of quitting does not stir her the way she expected.

Although the sensation of leaving the building without her badge and gun is disconcerting, Ziva easily walks out into the fierce afternoon sun with Tony and McGee. Instead of emptiness, she is gripped by a sensation of buoyancy- weightlessness.

Tony and McGee go for drinks, but Ziva goes home alone. She spends so little time in her apartment that she finds the place strange with all this sunlight pouring in on a weekday. She collapses on her bed and falls asleep within minutes.

She is exhausted down to her very marrow, sleeps all afternoon and most of the night. It's the longest she has slept in years. She thinks about eating breakfast and going for a run, but she naps again on her couch instead, her body desperate to make up for lost time.

She gets to be domestic, soft around the edges, after too long. Time stretches out before her like a red carpet, and she goes about the most mundane tasks with luxurious relish.

She buys groceries. Reads a new book. Vacuums her floor and does her laundry and pays her bills. She puts on music while she makes dinner, an old dusty disc with Arabic songs she knew in childhood. She remembers the words and sings along while the smell of sizzling onions and red wine fills her apartment.

Unemployment suits her well.

Until it doesn't.

* * *

She realizes fairly quickly that her apartment doesn't feel like home. When she finally begins spending time in it, she is hit with the realization that her walls are sparse and her bookshelves are dusty and this place has only ever been a place to sleep. Panic grips her, and refuses to let her go.

This isn't home. This apartment isn't home. Not like the office, where she used to see her family everyday. Her teammates were her mirrors – and without them, she doesn't know what she looks like anymore. The panic only grows wilder, more urgent, at the thought.

She misses her family, that feeling of belonging – but she was always taught that nothing lasted forever, that she must never depend on a happy ending. She was taught to create a home inside of herself and carry it with her, like a turtle shell, so that home was not a time or a place or a person but a feeling of comfort inside her skin, something that could not be taken away.

She had to be her own family, rooted within herself. And she was, for many years. The whole world could be her home, and therefore she was invincible.

That thought in and of itself terrifies her beyond reason. But that changed, some time during the early years of her tenure at NCIS, and she isn't sure exactly when that happened or why it never bothered her. She let herself believe that home was her office and her family was her coworkers and all of this could last.

But she is the daughter of a dead man. The woman who raised her left long ago, and she has no more siblings. Nothing lasts. Eli dying has reminded her of this, and it's only a matter of time before death and its sly fingers come for one of her teammates. Death has always had a special desire for the people she cares about.

This apartment is not home. She is not her own home anymore. NCIS was her home and she has been uprooted from it now. Yet, she left it with such strange, cool ease the day she handed in her badge, that she is no longer sure whether that was ever home either. Or whether she was home herself. Or whether there is any place on this earth that will take her and keep her and not let her down.

Her future is suddenly a gaping chasm, vast and unoccupied, and it takes her breath away. She has too much time, and nothing to do with it.

She has no roots. She is tethered nowhere, not even NCIS. Gravity has let go of her ankles and she is floating into the vast universe and she isn't sure how she got there. Her body is as hollow as the silent vacuum of the cosmos.

So she packs a bag, and runs.

* * *

She is immersed in the present at first, because the past was haunted and the future is hazy. She wanders like a lost balloon caught in the wind, coming and going on trains whenever she's bored. Which was fairly often.

But when she is in Cairo, she sees the old opera house, where she and Tali used to go when they were children living in the city for a few months – where the sisters would giggle and put on lipstick and high heels and pretend to be grownups, even though their driver dropped them off and picked them up directly from the front doors.

She sees a performance there, of the last opera she and her sister saw before leaving Cairo. Gianni Schicchi. The opening song begins, the notes seeping into her skin and into her swollen heart, and this is the moment that her resistance crumbles, a sand heap swallowed up by the sea, and the tears come.

People look at her strangely as the opera unfolds, wondering about this young woman crying steadily through the piece, crying so much that her eyes can barely open by the end. But she has much to mourn, as the music dips and soars and drags her back to happier years.

She cries for Tali, who loved dancing and boys and her older sister, who died too young and too soon. She cries for her dead mother, her dead brother, her dead father, all of whom betrayed her and then left her before she was ready to forgive them. She cries for war that has torn her very fabric apart. She cries for the person she became for Mossad. She cries for the blood on her hands. She cries for everything, everyone, that she has lost. Because she is broken, and confused, and the present is not enough for her – because she wants a future and she isn't sure where to find it. Because this is the first time she has ever really grieved for herself.

She has always fought to run away, or forget, or start over. She was never taught what to do with the carcasses of her sadness, her guilt, her grief, her memories – so she buried them so deep that they had hardened and stratified and clogged up the spaces between her organs. But they ooze out of her now, so long contained, and she still doesn't know how to deal with the fossils of her ancient heartache.

So she just sits with it, hiccupping and coughing and gasping for breath, long after the stage has darkened.

That's when she knows that in order to move on, she has to go backward, remember, unearth the past and all those old feelings without fear. Only with her past in her hands can she even begin to contemplate her future.

That's when the journey begins in earnest.

* * *

To Muscat, where her mother lived and soon died after the divorce.

To Damascus, where her grandparents are buried.

To Haifa, where her parents decided to officially divorce.

To Beirut, where she went for a class trip and witnessed her first bombing.

To Aleppo, where she went on her first mission.

She revisits those old places through the summer, forces herself to remember. Sometimes, she meets old friends, relatives. They talk of times long past- sometimes wistfully, sometimes joyfully, sometimes tearfully.

She buys cyclamens, soft pink with heart-shaped petals, and leaves them at each significant place. To leave something beautiful in a space where she only knew pain. To symbolize her resignation, and her last goodbye.

Tel Aviv, this house, is supposed to be her final trip. She gives herself a couple of days to prepare for her disappearance.

However, life has other plans for her.

* * *

Ziva didn't want to be found, but Tony DiNozzo finds her anyway.

He knocks on her door after a seemingly endless flight in cramped quarters – and she approaches the door with a gun in her hand, almost shoots him in the face, but he doesn't even blink. He's holding a bag of take-out from a street vendor, and says, "Long time, no see."

* * *

The air tastes different in Israel. It's dry, and spicy, and ancient. And the July heat takes on a life of its own, thicker and stickier than honey. The heat is their constant companion, as they sit on opposite ends of the couch, eyes level with their knees and their feet firmly touching, the cogs in their brains turning, turning, trying to decide what to do. The air tangles up with the words in her throat, and she is as dry as the desert inside.

"I did not want to be found," she reminds him, as she eats her half of the food. There is an edge of resentment in her voice, like a cool metal sword cutting through all this heat.

But the swipe of her weaponry is like a hug from an old friend, and he just smirks at her.

He swallows down his bite of noodles and says, "Too bad."

* * *

Night falls and becomes cooler, and it's a little bit easier to breathe. The city lights up and drowns out the darkness, but the house where she grew up is in a quieter area on the outskirts of town, and they can still see the stars. But he doesn't want to look at anything that isn't her.

She has barely spoken since he came, but he knows they need to talk. He knows that there are words churning inside of her, a maelstrom of emotion that she has carefully kept from lighting up her eyes. And he, too, has much to say. There has always been an endless list of things for them to talk about.

He is jet-lagged and exhausted from travel, and his body screams at him to sleep, but his eyes are wide open and watchful, and achingly tender, as he waits for her to let him in.

* * *

"I don't want to go back," she says, a couple of hours later as she lights candles around the living room.

This house was still the property of her father, who left it to her in his will, but she hasn't kept up with the bills in case someone came looking. The candlelight is ghostly. The shadows are too stark, and her face looks hollow.

"Why not?" he asks her.

She runs a hand through her chaotic curls, already exhausted. "There are things I need to do."

"Like what?"

"I don't know."

She waits for the inquisition to continue, but he goes silent at that. She rarely encounters him so quiet, so solemn.

He still looks so strange to her with a beard. He looks older, more haggard. The candlelight brings out the gauntness of his face too, the deep lines around his eyes, his mouth. His distinct laugh lines, and the baggy folds that betray his insomnia.

"Talk to me, Ziva," he murmurs, the words so quiet that they evaporate in the desert heat.

She closes her eyes, exhales her fatigue and her frustration and her impatience until there's nothing left.

* * *

The rules are different, now that they're both unemployed. They are different people tonight. The gleaming veneer of humor and normalcy has been stripped away, and two raw human beings remain. She, stubborn and vulnerable and brittle. He, tough and earnest and passionate.

They lie back, still on opposite ends of the couch, and he says, "I need to know what you're thinking."

She closes her eyes, inhales painfully. He needs to know – he came looking for her because he needs to know – and she can't bear to tell him that he's wasted a trip out here.

She sits up on the couch, circles her hands around her ankles and collapses gracefully into herself, the curve of her back like an upside-down dish. Her hair forms a curtain hiding her face from view; she presses her mouth into her knee to hold back the tumult rising inside of her.

He needs to know, and she isn't even sure where to begin.

* * *

Still curled up in that position, she starts to cry. She doesn't know where the tears come from, or how they dared find their way out of her, but they come and she is powerless to them. Her whole body quakes with the force of this sudden outburst of incomprehensible emotion.

He can hear her sobs echoing in his bones, and it shatters him. She is exhausted, and so is he— and with this past year, this unexpected trip, with everything building up in them and between them, something had to give. So she did. She gave. She shatters too.

So gently, he leans forward, lays a calming hand on her back. The weight of his hand is warm and comforting and familiar, and somehow unravels her further.

He rubs her back until he feels the tears and the tension in her muscles subside. When she is quiet and still, he takes her hands and gathers them up in both of his. She looks up at him with her red, blotchy face, her shiny eyes. He squeezes her hands, and leans forward, rests his forehead against hers once more. His nose grazes lightly against hers.

She is so tired, and he feels so good, and any resistance she used to have has melted away in the desert sun. His mouth is right there, his lips soft and beautiful and only a breath away. She has run out of reasons to not take what she wants.

So she kisses him first, opens those lips with her tongue and changes everything.

That first kiss tastes like the sea. Like fluid strength and sun-warmed tides and endless possibility. Like salt water, filling them up only to leave them hollow, hungry, needing more.

He is sweeter and sadder than she had expected. There is no humor in the way their tongues trade places in each other's mouths, no flirty curiosity in the way his hands run up and down the valleys of her curves. There is only a wild, desperate sort of neediness that makes them reckless.

He positions her on his lap, and loses his hands in her hair, and she lets him hold her, press her body against his. She has been running a long time, and she needs a place to land. So she chooses him, because he came for her and he is here and there is no one else.

For better or worse, there has never been anyone else.

* * *

Time loses all meaning as he kisses her. She is radiant, transcendent. But when it's over, and their foreheads are touching again, and she has the aftertaste of him lingering in her cells, time comes crashing down around her and she is pinned beneath its crushing weight.

She has spent this summer surrendering to her past, letting it catch up to her and engulf her. But the future she has contemplated for herself – the future of a rootless migrant, seeking and never yielding – is no longer within her reach.

She is still lost, but she is no longer rootless. She has roots in Tony. She never meant to set them there, but what was it he said to her once? _"The heart wants what it wants."_ She didn't believe him then, but she's getting an inkling now, as she tugs and tugs at her heartstrings and finds them all the more hopelessly entwined with his.

She never asked him to save her. She never asked him to find her. But he did and he is here and it has made him so happy. She hates him for being happy at her expense. She hates that she is the one who can bring out this vulnerability, this sweet glow practically radiating off of his features as he drinks her in.

She bites her lip, tries to make it bleed, tries to get rid of his essence from her. She furrows her brow, and settles into his arms, her head resting on his collarbone. She lets him hold her and she hates herself for that too – hates that he is a safe haven, one she can't resist.

She wants to disentangle herself and run away, but her bones are too heavy and he is so comfortable, intoxicating. She is drunk on him and her limbs have forgotten how to flee.

And he is endlessly patient, stroking her hair, kissing her forehead periodically. His throat is thick and his heart is swollen and he just wants to hold her like this for the rest of his life.

He wants so badly to take care of her, to lessen her burden for once. He has never wanted it so much in his life – wanted to be wanted, needed, loved and trusted enough to share her time and her secrets. He has spent much of his life running away from such responsibility – and yet he sprints towards it now with her. Because he loves her.

He loves her.

He admits it to himself, and exudes it in his very touch. And she soaks it up, hating herself all the more for taking it when she isn't sure she can reciprocate it.

* * *

They sit like this for hours, watch the sky darken and then lighten into a brilliant dawn. They are sleep-deprived, but beyond exhaustion. They watch the sunrise together, him still holding her, her still letting him.

She is finally the one to break the silence: "Do you want breakfast?"

He leans in, kisses her deeply.

"Already got it," he says.

And for the first time since she left NCIS, Ziva laughs.

* * *

Her laugh loosens him up, and he starts laughing too. His remark wasn't particularly funny, but the seriousness and the intimacy of the last few hours has been heavy to the point of being cumbersome, and it's a relief to shake that off for a few minutes, and laugh until their stomachs ache.

She throws her head back against his shoulder, laughing so hard that she starts snorting, and that sends him into further paroxysms of laughter. Tears stream down his face, and all this laughter, all this joy on top of every other thing he has felt for her over the course of eight years, is like a supernova exploding inside his gut.

"I love you," he manages to gasp, and he kisses her just as her laugher begins to wane. He still feels the hiccup of her giggle in her kiss, and he holds her all the more tightly.

She breaks the kiss, bites down on her lip, her eyes averted to her lap. Her eyes aren't bright with mischief anymore.

"Please don't do that," she whispers.

"Do what?"

"Make this harder."

She kisses him so tenderly, so briefly, that he almost thinks he imagined it. But the set of her delicate features is so devastatingly, quietly sad that he knows it was real.

He sighs, and pulls her into him once more, and wishes she, too, would stop making all of this so damn difficult.

* * *

"I still don't want to go back," she tells him flatly, listlessly. "I…cannot."

"Then don't come back to NCIS. Do something else. Do nothing, if you want. You have Eli's inheritance, right?"

"I still have a considerable amount left."

"So don't do anything. But come with me. Come home."

She squeezes her eyes shut against the word. "There is nothing left for me there."

"There are people who love you. There is a whole life there, if you want it."

She is agonized, but resolute. "I cannot."

"Why?"

She shifts so that she can look him straight in the eye. "I have no future."

These are the truest words she can find right now, but he doesn't believe her. He kisses her temples, slowly, deliberately, and then her lips.

"Tell me what you need," he whispers.

She lets her nose rub up against his. He smells like sweat and musk and airplane peanuts. He smells like early mornings at her desk, like crime scenes and late interviews and hurried meals and headslaps. Like another world, locked away just beyond her reach.

"Time," she whispers back.

* * *

They decide to eat out, after being cooped up in the house since yesterday. But even as they rejoin the regular world, his body remains noticeably close to hers. Some part of them always touches, even as they walk down the street, even as they sit outside at a sidewalk café and order their food.

They make minor small talk about street life, and people-watch. He makes up stories for everyone they see – the old white-haired woman in a long blue dress carrying a basket of produce, the two small boys running circles around their parents playing some game, the group of teenage girls in sunglasses laughing about something. Sometimes, he makes her laugh again, and that is always the best reward.

It's fun, and light, and their ankles constantly knock together under the table like they are a couple of schoolchildren, but there is a thick, unspoken tension underlying their meal, their walk back to her house. Because all of this is temporary – them staying at this house is temporary – and he doesn't know if they're going to leave this place together or not.

She told him that she needed time. He decides, as they walk back together, that she will spend that time here, now, with him. His was only a one-way ticket, the date of his return dependent on when she agrees to go back with him.

She didn't want to be found, but he found her anyway. And he is in no mood to lose her again.

* * *

The minute she shuts the front door, he pins her up against it, and kisses her urgently, as though he is ravenous and she is a feast and he has been waiting his whole life to have her. She is surprised, but she doesn't resist. She applies her own pressure right back, and grips his hair tight enough to pull it out of his scalp. Like she had been waiting for him to do this since they left for lunch.

They do an awkward four-legged dance to her old bedroom. It's empty save for her dresser and her bed, the one she slept in before he came for her. The blankets are still in a heap where she last left them. The room is devoid of any light, but she has no interest in wasting time with them. The darkness suits them just fine. They collapse onto the mattress, which creaks loudly with their weight, and she positions herself on top of him, her legs pinning him down on either side.

But as her urgency escalates to match his, he slows down, making each kiss longer and deeper, his tongue running up and down the roof of her mouth and sending shivers down her spine. She tries to speed him up again, but he goes all the more excruciatingly slow, his hands perched on her hips, his kisses swollen and sumptuous.

Her growing exasperation is strangely satisfying; the harder she pushes, the more he pulls back. She fumbles for the zipper of his pants, and practically rips them off his body, but he is content simply to let his hands sit on her hips, his thumbs rubbing circles into her bones. She can feel his smirk in his kiss, and it incenses her – and also turns her on. She hates that he knows what works on her.

The hungrier her kisses, the more he smirks. And when she finally bites him out of pure frustration, he breaks the kiss entirely, and rests his head back, chuckling.

"What?" she demands, eyes glinting with anger.

He tilts his head up to look directly into her face, but he's not chuckling anymore. The whites of his eyes practically glow in the dark. His smile fades into a smoldering desperation, as he anchors his hand to her jaw and murmurs, "Don't leave me."

She exhales all in a rush, like a deflated balloon. She gets up off of him, and sits at the foot of the bed, runs her hand through her curls, suddenly looking exhausted. He, too, sits up, and he takes her hands in his. His palms are hot and clammy, but firm and secure, and he holds her hands against his chest. The gesture is surprisingly intimate, with the faint beat of his heart just barely palpable on her fingers.

Their hands still interlocked, he leans in, close enough that she can count every shade of green in his irises. His lips are parted, as though he's about to kiss her, but instead he asks her, "Do you love me?"

Instinctively, she jumps. Their hands separate; hers clench into fists. Her stomach contracts, tight and painful. The way she looks at him is tender, almost pleading; it sends a pang through both their hearts.

"Tony..."

"It's a pretty straightforward question," he says gruffly. "Do you, or don't you?" To his credit, he never averts his gaze.

"Of course I do," she says, but she appears on the verge of tears.

"Then don't leave me."

She can't imagine how difficult it must be for him to say this out loud, in such plain simplicity. In the eight years they have danced around the edges of this truth, he is the first to leap right into the murky center, consequences be damned.

He is so much braver than she ever was. The force of the realization is like a bomb blast of understanding, all the pieces falling into place.

He is so much braver than she is, because after everything he has been through, every romantic disappointment, every abandonment by a loved one, he is not afraid of roots. He has a future, and he is willing to seize it, and share it with her.

He loves her deeply, despite several good reasons not to, and now he has told her. And for him, the way forward isn't complicated.

D.C. is home for him – for both of them. D.C. is the place where he fell in love with her. D.C. is where they should be together, where their love blooms in summer sunshine.

He still has that hope, the one that flares like fireworks in his eyes and makes his whole face look ten years younger. He looks at her with all that hope, waiting for her to tell him that she won't leave him. Waiting for her to realize that she wants him – that he can kiss her once and drive her senseless with desire, because she has roots in him and he isn't about to let her go, not when he loves her like he does, not when she loves him back.

She doesn't know how to be brave like him. She doesn't say a word, commit either way. But she gives him what she has. She leans in and kisses him, relishes in the way he complies, in the way his beard prickles as it brushes against her skin – a rough layer contrasting with the tenderness of his lips. She lets him think the best of her, and strives to live up to it.

* * *

They have sex for the first time in her childhood bed that night. The moon watches impassively from the window as they peel off each other's clothes, and consummate this wild, complicated thing that has percolated between them for so many years.

The room, the house, the whole world is still, asleep; the vast silence and the glowing moon are their only witnesses; it's a secret carried out in the day's smallest hours. It is new and raw and real in a way it has never been for either of them before. Because these are not just four lips, four wandering hands; this is not man and woman briefly becoming one.

This is Tony's lips on Ziva's lips, Ziva's hands on Tony's hands – Tony and Ziva becoming one. This is Ziva, giving Tony the last piece of herself that she has withheld from him. This is Tony, giving Ziva somewhere to call home again. This is Ziva, letting him.

It's a pact in the middle of the night on ancient holy land. It's a happy memory in a house that has seen too few. It's an act of love that shatters them both, yet renews something arcane and elemental within the two of them. He takes such pleasure from her, but she is full with all the pleasure she has taken from him. They are transcendent, invincible.

She didn't want to be found, but he found her anyway. And now they have this new shared past, an experience that binds them together in the most intimate way – and there is a future. She has a future. She is tethered somewhere.

He found her, and he will not lose her. Not again.

* * *

They are tangled up in these old sheets, in each other, their limbs a loose interconnected mess. It's not immediately clear where one ends and the other begins. Her head rests against his collarbone, and she listens to his skittering heartbeat. There is a languid, satiated contentedness about them, like a glow radiating off their skin, electrifying the air in the sweetest way.

She falls asleep just as dawn breaks, lighting up the sky with a new summer's day. The golden light illuminates the delicate slopes and angles of her face, the warmth and shine of her curls. She is perfectly at peace here in his arms, in a way she has never been. He is overcome with pride, that he is the one who can inspire this in her.

He kisses her forehead, and she shifts slightly, resting her cheek on his chest. He holds her close, pulls the blanket higher over them both to lock in their intermingling heat, to keep them safely encapsulated in the perfection of this moment.

She sleeps soundly on, and he buries his face in her hair, falls asleep too, lost in the scent of her, vaguely like vanilla and figs.

* * *

They wake up when the sun is high, and their stomachs growl, but she is better than food. He marks every inch of her body with his teeth, mapping her every contour with his tongue, finding the spots that make her stiffen, moan, shudder. She lays, compliant and serene, as he explores her, every bit of her.

Sometimes he finds scars in varying degrees of healing, fading. He traces each one with his finger, tastes the saltiness and the old pain and grief of each one, kisses her over and over and over again because he loves her scars and all.

She closes her eyes and just lets him do it, lets him experience her every detail. She doesn't have anything to hide from him anymore. He found her, and he has earned the privilege of loving her. She opens her legs for him, and he learns his way around her deepest folds, exuberantly but so gently. And she comes for him, her back arching and then relaxing, her every cell alive with joy.

His hands and his mouth and the entirety of his beautiful soul are home in a way no place, no other person, has ever been for her, not even herself. She welcomes him in, and lets her body and their love be a celebration, a safe haven to share.

He is home, and so is she.

* * *

When he is exhausted, when he is full, overflowing, with the pleasure of loving her, she takes over. He gives her his body to make her own, mark it as her territory – hers and hers alone for the rest of his days. He has no reservations, nothing to hide. She tastes every inch of him as he did her, and she isn't afraid. She wants him, unabashedly, and that's the greatest gift she could have given him.

He's tired of the facades and the compromises and the misunderstandings and all of the tragedy. It's wrong, denying how he feels. He only wants this, for the rest of his days. Just this.

* * *

Sleep comes for him quickly, painlessly, like a gentle wave pulling him under. But sleep takes its time coming for Ziva, and it's not just because of Tony's snoring.

She didn't expect him to find her, or wear her down when he did. She didn't expect these shapeless, perfect days with him, loving each other in raw, instinctive synergy, as though this is acceptable- inevitable.

She has done things she cannot speak of aloud. There is blood on her hands, and it won't wash away, it can't wash away. She has done things that cannot be forgiven. It seems impossible now, to be curled up in bed with a man who loves her, who has scoured the ends of the earth for her. Rationally, that can't be fair. She has done little to deserve it.

His faith in her is a revelation, but it is a looming, terrifying presence above her- because ultimately, his faith in her is not permanent. Love is conditional- love is a complicated, noxious cocktail served to her only sparingly- and she knows that even if she meets all the conditions, even if she does everything right, he is mortal. She is mortal. Their job, the one he still wants, is dangerous. The number of variables to consider in all of this are dizzying.

She glances at his face, so peaceful in sleep, smooth and untroubled. And it sends a cold pang all the way through her when she realizes that she is selfish, and reckless, and she doesn't love him enough to spare him the trouble of their mortality and their baggage and the fact that because she doesn't deserve him, he will be taken away from her. She doesn't love him enough to help them both swerve the inevitable heartbreak. She doesn't love him enough to keep pretending, relentlessly resisting.

She's tired of those facades and compromises and misunderstandings and tragedy. It's wrong, but she only wants this, for the rest of her days. Just this.

* * *

When she wakes up in the morning, he is already awake and dressed, with coffee and donuts for breakfast. As she eats her share, he fetches his bag from the living room, tells her he has something to show her. She gets dressed and sits on the bed beside him, intrigued to see what he has.

It turns out to be a piece of paper, neatly folded into a small square. It's old, a little faded, but he sits beside her and unfolds it with her.

"I found it when I was looking for you," he explains, as she gasps sharply. "Your old friend told me where to dig it up."

"That was supposed to stay buried." She says this in a low voice, almost a hiss, but not with any anger.

She carefully takes from him the list she wrote in childhood, the wishlist of things she wanted to do in her life, back when she was small and the world contained only promise. Her handwriting is careful and neat, but there are moments of spontaneity and joy in the loops of her letters, the flourish with which she signed her name at the end.

It's an archaeological treasure, this list; she was sure it was lost to time, to the earth. But no, it is here. It's in her hand. Because he went looking before she even knew it could be found. Somehow, the thought fills her eyes with tears.

"I cannot believe you have this," she whispers, tracing her fingers over her childish letters, her young hopes. But he only smiles at her, because he prides himself on doing the seemingly impossible.

"I never did do any of these things," she continues heavily, setting the list on the coffee table in front of them. "Become a ballerina. Have a girl and a boy. I saw America, but I saw it as a murderer."

"And also as a federal agent, defending the innocent," he points out.

"Is that enough?" She runs a hand through her hair, glances towards the window, the sunlight streaming in.

"I think it is."

He hooks his finger beneath her chin, and gently turns her back to face him so that he can kiss her, affectionate but firm.

She lets him coax some of the bitterness out of her, but when he breaks the kiss, she still looks troubled.

"I don't know if there will ever be enough time," she admits, still staring at the list on the table.

"Enough time for what?"

"To atone. To make right what I have done wrong since I wrote that list. To…forget." She sighs, her shoulders curling inward almost protectively.

She is quiet for a few moments, mulling over that list, all the memories. Then she murmurs, haltingly— "I have felt…disconnected, of late. Without root, without…home. Claustrophobic, yet agoraphobic. Suffocated, yet lost to the wind."

She takes a deep breath, swallows thickly. "There has been…so much to lose. So much to mourn. I wonder if that is my fault. Because of what I became, after I wrote this list."

The tears that she unlocked on her previous wanderings rise to the surface again, threaten to burst their boundaries – and they do. They fall down her cheeks, hot and true, and she closes her eyes to them, to all of it. Her body trembles with the tremendous guilt and sorrow still built up inside of her.

But he is as patient as the earth, and he does not walk away. He gathers her up in his arms and he kisses her forehead and he lets her burrow her face into his neck, where it's warm and dark and smells like him. Once again, she cries – for all that has been, for all that could have been. For all she has wished, and lost.

"There is still time, Ziva," he says into her hair. "There is time for everything."

She emerges out of his neck, red and tear-streaked but not defeated. He kisses the tears off of her cheeks, the salt and the sadness transferring from her skin to his. There is no reason for her to bear this alone. Then he kisses her lips, transfers some of his hope, his faith, to her.

"I promise you will dance again," he whispers.

* * *

"I do not deserve you," she says later that night, when they are back in her room and in her bed and he is kissing her shoulder. "I do not deserve a future."

She is serious, but he chooses to playfully bite her shoulder, smile wryly up at her.

"Let me be the judge of that," he says, and kisses her mouth, hard, silencing her before she can say some other ridiculous, untrue thing to ruin their moods.

* * *

At long last-

"I cannot fight anymore," she admits breathlessly, between kisses.

"You don't have to," he tells her, tangling his hands inside her hair. "It's time to make peace. The war is over."

And it is, isn't it?

Because he has broken her brittle strength, and crawled his way beneath her skin and into her heart, and she is bound to him, the way a tree is rooted to the earth in which it thrives. Whether or not she deserves him, she is bound to him, and all the reasons to cut herself loose have evaporated with the heat of his body, their heady kisses. She loves him, and he loves her, and there is no other way to go forward, or make sense of this.

She loves him, and he loves her, and her ambivalence is no longer a good enough reason not to stay.

She loses this battle- and yet it simultaneously feels like a poignant victory.

* * *

That night, she can't sleep again. She puts on her clothes and paces the room, up and down, up and down, her mind frantic and wandering. He wakes when he reaches his hands out around him and can't find her. He opens his eyes and sees her silhouette illuminated by moonlight, her brow furrowed and her face visibly tense even from this distance in the dark.

"Ziva?"

She looks up abruptly, her gaze meeting his. He sits up in bed, rubs his eyes and squints at her.

"Ziva, are you okay?"

She sighs, leans against the wall opposite the bed, not daring to come any closer. She chews on her thumb nail, her eyes bright in the dark, her hair a wild, moon-lit mess. He waits for her to answer his question, the intensity of his gaze speaking louder and more forcefully than any words could have. She bites down on her nail, feels it crack and break between her teeth.

"I do not know that I can...do this," she says, choosing her words carefully.

"Do what?"

"Go back to Washington, with you. Act as though it is acceptable for me to have a life there."

"Why would it not be acceptable for you to have a life there?" He sounds tired, but alert, yawning and never losing that arresting stare of his.

She wants to evade the question- wants to leave the room on the pretense of needing coffee and then run out of the house, disappear as she still knows how to do. That's what would be easy, and right. That's what she would do if she loved him enough.

But she doesn't love him enough. She chews a different nail, and stays. She decides to give him the unpleasant truth, rather than the lie or the silence that would have soothed him back to sleep. She gathers up the words inside of her and forces them up her throat, even as they sting her, hot and sharp like acid.

"You do not know...who I used to be," she says, each word measured and painful. "You do not know what I used to do. You do not know...who I was, and who I am because of it. You tell me that the war is over, and it is time for peace- but my father is dead, my family is gone, and there can be no peace with these sins branded upon my soul. I am not a little girl with a list of dreams, Tony. I am a soldier. I was raised a soldier. There is no peace for a soldier- just the company of ghosts. And I...cannot return to D.C. with you, pretending that it is home, pretending that there is a home for me, that I even deserve one. I need...time. I need to start over. I do not know that I can do that in D.C. with you."

He just stares at her then, his lips parted but without words spilling out of him. His eyes shine, sparkling with such tremendous empathy, so genuine and overflowing that it makes her physically comfortable, turns her stomach into a mess of knots. He makes no motion to get out of bed, touch her face or hold her hand, and so they stare at each other in perfect silence from across the room- Ziva, fully clothed against the wall, and Tony, naked and vulnerable in a nest of blankets. Unconsciously, she finds herself holding her breath, so thick is the tension in the vast gulf between them.

He waits a long time before he says anything. She cannot imagine what is going through his head- shock, sadness, a sense of betrayal. She cannot imagine what he is thinking. She can't decide whether she wants him to agree with her or not- whether she wants him to see the truth and let her go, or ignore it and bluster forward with his ludicrous notion of a happy ending. She cannot deny that the happy ending is tempting, but it is ultimately a shimmering mirage in the desert sparkling for fools naive enough to believe in it, and she is so weary of more lies. She tries to make herself as small as possible, curling in her shoulders and chewing on her fingernails, waiting.

After several long, tense minutes, he chooses not to say anything. He gets out of bed, and fishes his boxer shorts off the floor, slips them on. He crosses the room towards her, his feet much less quiet than hers had been. Where her footsteps were soft and discreet, he sets the floor creaking. But his footsteps are sure and steady, and he steps right up to her, so close that she can see every shadow, every detail of his face's topography, every tiny refraction of light against his irises.

He gently tilts up her chin with his index finger, his eyes boring into hers, as though searching her for something. He leans in close, his mouth a breath away from hers, but he doesn't kiss her.

"I'm not afraid of your ghosts, Ziva," he whispers into her ear.

"I do not like the person I have had to be." Her voice breaks on the last word, like shattered glass. She bites her lip hard, chokes down a sudden onslaught of tears.

"But I do." His voice breaks too, in just the same way. "I do like the person you became."

She exhales, long and shaky, but he captures her lips in a kiss, and she doesn't resist. He is a strong tide sweeping up a limp creature off the shore, rough and bracing and raggedly beautiful. He kisses her like he is kissing away her hopelessness, her doubt, her fear, her guilt. He kisses her firmly, and patiently, and with such unspeakable tenderness. He kisses her until she is senseless, robbed of air, robbed of resistance. He kisses her until all that is left inside her is him.

"You don't get to go backwards," he reminds her, his tone raw. "You have to go forward. The war is over. It's time to make a new list, and come back to the people who love you." One last kiss, deep but fleeting. "Come back to me. Start over with me."

She wants to kiss him, but she can't find it in herself to initiate. The taste of him still lingers in her mouth, deliciously fizzy and profoundly tragic. She compromises by kissing the corner of his mouth, his cheek, the outside ring of his ear.

"If I loved you less, I would," she says into his ear.

"Then love me less," he counters, no hesitation.

* * *

This is what always happens to her. She leaves his bed, tries to leave him, but he comes back and he finds her and he fills her up with his intoxicating promises. She never wanted to be found, but he finds her anyway, again and again. Her heart is his, and there is no way around this incontrovertible fact. Her heart is his, and togetherness is inevitable.

There is nothing left to fight against. All she can do now is fight for him, for both of them- for the peace that is theirs for the taking.

* * *

He brings her back to bed, and unearths her old list, and a pen from somewhere deep inside his bag. She looks up at him quizzically, not understanding, and he explains- "I know you didn't get to do as much of this list as you wanted. But there's room on the back here, see? There's room for a new list. A new start. We can do it together."

Her throat is thick with emotion. "You want to make a new list with me?"

"I do," he confirms solemnly. "Where should we start?"

* * *

They spend the remaining hours of the night and the early dawn writing the list- brainstorming, negotiating, sometimes even laughing. She wants to travel, and he wants children- a boy and a girl, three years apart.

"But you don't like children," she points out, half-giggling, half-awed.

"I don't like other people's children," he corrects her, grinning. "Our children would be perfectly behaved."

"Not if they get your sense of humor."

"They'd have you to balance it out."

She adds this to the list, because he wants it- and because maybe someday she could see herself wanting it too. Holding that tiny life inside of her, and then raising the baby into a thoughtful, conscientious adult, one they can both be proud of. One who will not bear the brunt of Eli and Senior's mistakes.

They talk into the morning of all they want to do and be and accomplish. He engages her with the exciting, the hypothetical, in an effort to distract her pessimistic eye for the past. He knows that there are limits to her trust, to her ability to hope for the best, but he is determined to convince her that he is a more permanent option than she believes.

He is determined to show her that the future is to be celebrated, and embraced. He is determined to bring her home, and help her thrive.

* * *

She lets him book tickets to D.C. the very same evening, offering him her laptop to make the arrangements as a sign of good will. It has been strange enough to live in this little haven they have made for themselves, cocooned away in her childhood home, but now it is stranger still to think of traveling again, and not doing it alone this time. It's strange, and a little uncomfortable, and yet it feels natural, in a sense. Perhaps inevitable. Or, at the very least, possible in a way it wasn't when she first left D.C.

He is with her now. She struggles to trust anyone, or anything, but she clings to him all the same, lets him lead her out of this country, out of her own head. This is not to say her doubts have magically evaporated- but she sets them aside for now, for him.

They pick the flight together, him doing the clicking and her resting her chin on his shoulder, watching his progress, sometimes sticking her tongue in his ear to make him jump. She chortles wickedly every time, and he rewards her by pulling her onto his hip and kissing her to oblivion.

There is much to fear, but everything to gain. His excitement, and faith in a home back in Washington D.C., makes it easier to believe that things can still go right.

* * *

They say goodbye to her home, to Israel. They say goodbye to her past, her mistakes. They say goodbye to the old chapter in their lives when they could never be more than friends.

They travel through time and space, gain back several hours, and begin again.

* * *

The team is surprised by their couple-hood, to say the least. Yet, they are also not surprised, because it was only a matter of time for the two of them anyway. Mostly, Gibbs and McGee and Abby and Ducky and Palmer are relieved, because Tony and Ziva are home again, and they have this glow about them now, one they've never had before. Their joy is palpable, and infectious. The whole family is together once more.

Tony gets back to work right away, and Ziva uses her free time to find an apartment for them both to share. They sign a lease after three weeks, for an apartment roughly halfway between their old apartments.

They had agreed upon returning to D.C. that they wanted a new place, a place of their own – a fresh start, their version of a happily ever after.

They start the move-in process two days after signing the lease.

* * *

The process of putting their new home together is long, full of petty disagreements and negotiation and domestic hilarity. They get to choose their bed and their couch and the paint colors and the pictures for the wall, and it's a lot of fun, choosing and arguing and choosing something new entirely. He insists upon no less than the most technologically-advanced TV and home movie system on the market, and she decides she wants to have a garden on the little balcony overlooking the street, and slowly, slowly, the space begins to truly feel like theirs.

She actually loves the chance to get to know the apartment, to paint it and put it together and move furniture around while he is at work. Unemployment becomes her now as it did not the first time. She feels comfortable in this place she shares with him. She grows small herbs on the balcony, and uses them when preparing meals. She likes working with her hands, making things and doing things.

As summer turns to fall, she thrives. She meditates, does yoga, goes on long runs in the city. She cooks, and plays music, and starts singing to herself, simply because she can. She starts taking dance classes again, just for herself.

She doesn't worry about finding a job, or making concrete plans for later. Instead, she learns to find her way again.

* * *

It takes time, for her to trust that all of this is good and real and right. For her to let go of her reservations, and love this place, and trust her future. Nothing lasts, she knows all too well – but it takes time for her to learn that it's not about dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, that it's about being comfortable with the present, with what it means and how it unfolds. It takes time to remember that it's not about forgetting or repressing or ignoring, but about forgiving, and moving forward.

There are scars inside of Ziva that she cannot wish away, that her magnificent, faithful Tony cannot kiss away. She knows this. But with time, she begins to heal, and it's the progress that matters.

It takes time – but finally, she understands, that she has all the time in the world.

* * *

A/N: I thought about going farther, maybe heading into baby territory, maybe talking about the dance studio I want Ziva to open. I have a happy ending in mind for her. But that goes beyond the scope of this story, I think. It felt right to stop it here, with healing.

I should also say now, since I didn't say it in the first author's note—it's not just this story I'm stopping at this point. I will no longer be writing Tiva fics of any sort from this point on.

The thing is that with this story, I have told all the stories I needed to tell. I have given Tony and Ziva their happy ending, as I see it in my head, and my muse is now content with the body of work I have put up on this website. I believe in Tony and Ziva, and their love, and I will ship them forever after – but it'll be the quiet kind of shipping that no longer utilizes my muse to express itself publicly.

If this disappoints anyone, all I can say is that I am truly sorry. But my muse has been drifting away from Tiva for months now – I found it difficult just to get this fic done – and I think the timing is right, everything considered. I dunno which fandom I'll float towards next; only time will speak to that.

Thank you, though, so much, for reading – this story as well as the others, if you're a repeat reader. I profoundly appreciate the support and encouragement I've received from this fandom over the last couple of years. I'm always around to PM, so feel free to do that any time. I hope I'll hear from you guys. Thanks again, for everything.


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